Save Our Hospitals is a resident-led campaign group formed in July 2012. We are FIGHTING against the NHS plans to DEMOLISH Charing Cross Hospital and downgrading of our A&Es( Hammersmith, Charing Cross, Ealing and Central Middlesex Hospitals)

Saturday, 19 March 2016

A&E now 'overwhelmed' says top doc as he calls for army of medics to be sent in

Dr Cliff Mann, President of the College of Emergency Medicine, which represents A&E doctorsPhoto: Rex

Casualty departments are on the brink of collapse and hundreds of doctors should be drafted from other duties to avert an immediate crisis, Britain’s most senior Accident & Emergency doctor has said.

Dr Cliff Mann said hospitals across the country were being overwhelmed by "unprecedented" levels of pressure and overcrowding amid desperate shortages of medics.

At several NHS trusts, more than half of A&E shifts for doctors have gone unfilled since a cap on spending on locum medics was introduced, the President of the College of Emergency Medicine said.

In an extraordinary intervention, he urged health officials to now divert hundreds of doctors from other hospital duties to get “all hands on deck” and ensure casualty departments could operate safely.

In a letter to The Telegraph, Dr Mann said overcrowding in A&Es had reached “unacceptable” levels as he called for urgent “exceptional measures” in order to protect the public.

He told this newspaper: “The pressures have become unrelenting. In recent days I’ve been contacted by a number of senior doctors, medical directors, high-level people, who are saying the situation now is like nothing they’ve seen before.

However, the College’s own audit of 40 casualty departments suggests performance against an NHS target to treat 95 per cent of patients in four hours has reached a record low.

Just 82 per cent of A&E patients were treated in four hours in the first week of March, the new figures show, a fall from 89 per cent in December.

“We have been stretching an elastic band – it has now snapped,” the college warned in a briefing paper today.

A Department of Health spokesman said: "The NHS is coping well in the face of exceptional demand and compared to January last year saw 111,000 more people in A&E within four hours. We are committed to delivering a safer seven day NHS which is why we have invested £10bn to fund the NHS's own plan to transform services in the future.”

A spokesperson for NHS England said: “A&E visits are up sharply since Christmas but fortunately the number of A&E trolley waits is down compared with last winter.

"In fact fewer hospitals have reported serious operational issues, but winter has bitten later this year and following renewed pressures in January and February, detailed plans are being put in place for Easter to ensure good service availability over the four day bank holiday. In the face of these challenges it is a credit to all those working in emergency care that we are still admitting, treating and discharging almost nine out of ten patients within four hours”.